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Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that
distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving
activity, whatever is due to some specific agency- for example,
to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations- this
entire range of production is to be referred, not to each such
single cause, but to the nature of the thing produced [i.e., to a
certain natural tendency in the product to exist with its own
quality].
All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be
ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is
something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor.
Where we think we see the transmission of some force unfavourable
to the production of living beings, the flaw must be found in the
inability of the subject to take in what would serve it: for what
happens does not happen upon a void; there is always specific
form and quality; anything that could be affected must have an
underlying nature definite and characterized. The inevitable
blendings, further, have their constructive effect, every element
adding something contributory to the life. Then again some
influence may come into play at the time when the forces of a
beneficent nature are not acting: the co-ordination of the entire
system of things does not always allow to each several entity
everything that it needs: and further we ourselves add a great
deal to what is transmitted to us.
None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something
wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of
varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies
in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better
kind among things of process anything falls short- the reluctance
of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping
under idea- it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble
element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend,
something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying
nature, something added by the self.
Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in
unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make
virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally inwoven
into the ordered system by the general law that the things of
this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the content of our
universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings in whom our
world is participant.
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